Sunday, 3 July 2016

My Garden Party and Launch

I promised to post some pictures of my open house garden party last Sunday. These are a few snatched photos as I had my hands full so my apologies if I've missed anyone.

The last time we had the pop up gazebo out was for the Queen's Street party in her Jubilee Year!! Hubby had broken one of the struts, hence we've not had it erected all these years, and did a temporary fix by using duct tape to secure a broom handle to the broken strut! Having 3 sides to the gazebo meant that if it rained, the display would still be okay!

Naturally because it was outdoors, I couldn't set up until the Sunday morning. My display tables were a hotch potch comprising the wall paper paste table, and various other tables vaguely the same height! Once you cover it up with a black tablecloth, it covers up everything and you'd be none the wiser, except now I've let the cat out of the bag!!!

I had a separate table for the raffle, extra catalogues, a smaller display and a basket with some freebie stamp sets for anyone who booked a party/workshop and occasional chairs dotted around in pairs so people could browse the catalogues.

Inside our summer house, also known as the pumpkin, was the Make & Take station - having a round table and Lazy Susan certainly makes it easy to pass ink pads, stamps etc round!

Underneath the seating bench, there was room to put extra card kit supplies, reinkers etc ready in hand as I needed them.

Once I'd demoed the card I could then mingle and people came and went at their leisure to do the Make & Take pictured below.

A really quicky and simply stamped card using Touches of Texture Stamp and Thoughtful Banners stamp set. The inks I used were Peekaboo Peach, Sweet Sugarplum, Wild Wasabi and Memento Black Ink and the new duo banner punch finished off with rhinestones.

We had a refreshment table, cordial and bottles of water, condiments, paper plates and cups all set up for everyone to help themselves.

More importantly, the short order cook, aka my beloved better half was on barbecue duty churning out yummy American hot dogs with proper American hot dog buns! (Even more impressive that he made himself available as he is usually off with his mates at Field Archery on a Sunday so a huge "Thank You" to him for volunteering!!!)

Thank goodness the sun shone - we had a blast and we can now declare our newly laid patio and new summer house well and truly christened!

My sister-in-law and her husband popped in on Friday en route to the West Country and typically, the British weather was being fickle. It was wet and miserable but we still ate out doors in the Pumpkin in the warm and dry. Love that it has its own lighting and heating system for all weather use!